


Virtue for Its Own Sake

by oldjosjos



Category: Marvel, Spider-Man (Comicverse), Venom (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hospitalization, Symbiote Removal by Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 01:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17356469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oldjosjos/pseuds/oldjosjos
Summary: Peter Parker is a man who takes pride in being prepared for anything. He couldn't have been prepared for what the symbiote did to Eddie Brock.





	Virtue for Its Own Sake

When Peter made plans, he made them meticulously. There was no room for error, there was no chance of facing a problem he hadn’t been prepared for. Today was no exception—far from it.

Today, he was teaming up with Johnny Storm. He was in the middle of a long-since decommissioned airplane hanger. And they were about to end Venom.

Peter saw Venom and Eddie about as often as he saw his own wife, and the wording was important there: Venom _and_ Eddie. That had changed in the past few months. Eddie’s time outside the suit grew shorter and shorter, until all Peter saw was his face the moment before Venom masked it. Soon enough he didn’t even see that. Venom grew wilder, more violent, more predatory. It didn’t take a genius to tell that Eddie wasn’t in control anymore. And Peter was gonna do something about that.

It wasn’t hard to lure Venom into a building, especially given his newfound lack of human reason. If he saw an opportunity to kill the Spider-Man, he’d take it.

Speaking of killing Spider-Man, right now Venom was getting a _bit_ too close to that for comfort.

“It’s the end of the line, pal,” Peter said, his teeth gritted as he strained against Venom’s grasp. At this point they were grappled, hands webbed together as they fought for dominance.

Venom roared with laughter as he shoved Peter to his knees. **“I DON’T THINK YOU UNDERSTAND, SPIDER,”** he said, his grin wide as ever. **“AS LONG AS YOU ARE ONE AGAINST ME, THE ONLY PERSON WHO WILL BE REACHING THE END OF THEIR LINE IS** **_YOU._ ** **”**

“Now who said I was the only one against you?”

Venom froze. His grin went sour. Peter looked up to the ceiling.

“TORCH, NOW!”

Where you once could see only shadows in the rafters, there came a flaming male figure—a Human Torch, you might say. Johnny dove into Venom like he was going for the gold medal. The symbiote’s screams were deafening, its pleas incoherent.

“Like I said”—Peter pulled his hands free, with a bit of help from Johnny—“end of the line.”

“Stop quippin’ and focus a few feet in front of you, bud,” Johnny shouted. “You’ve gotta get Brock!”

“Oh, you don’t have to tell me twice,” Peter said. He positioned himself below Venom, cringing through the desperate noises of pain, and searching for any sign of Eddie.

After about twenty seconds of fire damage on Johnny’s part, Peter saw it. Human fingertips poking through Venom’s. He grinned as he leapt up to grab Eddie’s hand, though his smile dropped as he pulled it loose.

Ghost white, skin and bone. Cold.

“I’ve got him, Johnny!” Peter shouted, his voice reserved but still hopeful. “We’ll go on the count of three. One, two,”

“Three!”

Johnny flew back into the wall at top speed while Peter shot a web over his shoulder, pulling himself and Eddie to the other side of the hangar.

It took Peter a few seconds to reorient himself, but when he did he could see that things had gone to plan. Johnny was on the floor, wrestling the loose symbiote with all the force he had in him. It played through the flames, now near-silent as it grew smaller and smaller. Johnny met Peter’s eye, far from smiling.

“I’ve got this handled, Peter!” he called. “Focus on yours!”

Peter blinked once, twice, and turned his attention to Eddie. He was breathing. Seemed like his heart was beating. That was about all the good Peter could say.

He wasn’t sure, but it seemed like any part of Eddie’s body that could be used had been drained in its entirety. He was limp against the ground, hollow cheeks and eyes. Peter scrambled to pull him up.

This was a problem he wasn’t prepared for.

“I’ve gotcha,” Peter said. He held Eddie’s head up with his free hand, as it didn’t seem like he could do it on his own. “Can you hear me?”

Eddie blinked at him. Peter grimaced.

“Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?”

At this, Eddie’s face shifted. It was a microscopic change—Peter couldn’t put a finger on what it meant.

And then he felt a two-finger tap against his arm. His eyes darted to Eddie’s hand and he took it up in his. Eddie took a shuddering breath.

“Whaddya need? We’re gonna get you out of here, don’t worry—”

Another microscopic change, but this time Peter could understand it. As Eddie’s hand twitched upward, Peter lifted it, offering the strength he lacked. As his hand reached about eye level with Peter’s mask, he pointed. With a pause, Peter took Eddie’s hand and held it against his face. Eddie scratched against the fabric.

“You want me to take it off?”

Eddie offered a small nod.

Peter pulled away his mask, wiping the sweat from his brow as he did. He lowered Eddie’s hand back to his chest, along with the mask. Eddie dug his fingers into the fabric and looked at Peter with wide eyes. Peter wasn’t sure if they were happy or sad or confused or what, but they were big, and he was sure that meant something.

“First time in a while I’ve seen you without you trying to bash my skull in. Kinda nice.” He looked back at Johnny, who was scrambling to keep a hold on the very small but very angry symbiote. “Wish it could be under better circumstances, but we’ve got it under control. You’re gonna be alright.”

Peter squeezed Eddie’s shoulder, trying not to get too upset over how little there was to hold. When he looked back at Eddie, he was upset by something both different and significantly worse.

“Eddie, Eddie, calm down,” Peter said. The wide-eyed look on Eddie’s face was now very clearly one of fear. He gasped in and out for breath he didn’t seem to be able to use. Peter could feel his eyes well up a bit as he tugged Eddie up into a one-sided hug, running his hand up and down his back. “Shh, shh.”

He gasped and whimpered and gasped some more. Peter kept his eyes fixed on the still-struggling Johnny as he tried in vain to comfort Eddie.

And then the gasping stopped. And nothing took its place.

“Eddie?”

Peter pulled Eddie away and looked him in the eyes. He could see his expression shifting like a gradient—fear to confusion to exhaustion. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Nothing came in, nothing came out.

Peter’s stomach dropped.

“Johnny, we’ve gotta get out of here,” he said, his voice quick and stern as he stood up, pulling Eddie alongside him like a ragdoll. “He can’t breathe, we’ve gotta get to a hospital.”

Johnny was on his hands and knees, trying to hold the symbiote down as it wormed in and out of his grasp. He looked up at Peter with, quite literally, fire in his eyes.

“Do _not_ wait for me,” he ordered. “I don’t need backup to run this ratrace. But Eddie does.”

“But—”

“Peter, _go_.”

Peter paused, and a moment later, nodded.

With Eddie webbed snug around his back, Peter went swinging into the night, and into New York General.

 

* * *

 

It was already too late. It had been for some time.

Peter’s guess was right—every part of Eddie’s body had been effectively destroyed. Heart and lungs, liver and kidneys—if blood ran through it, the symbiote had used it ‘til it failed.

Peter had been the one to approve life support. He knew well as anyone else that recovery was impossible, but he hoped to find someone to be there with Eddie. Family, friends, lovers—anyone who may have known him.

Well, his mother was long dead. His father wanted nothing to do with him. Same went for his brother. The most Peter got out of former partners were sympathetic words and polite refusals. And as for friends, there weren’t really any to speak of.

Eddie seemed to have close relationships with only two people: Spider-Man and Venom. One of those people wasn’t available for obvious reasons, so here Peter was. Full costume, at the bedside of a man who hated him much more often than he appreciated him.

Today was the day.

To say Eddie looked peaceful would be a bald-faced lie. No one with a tube down their throat and their eyes taped shut ever did. But he did look more than ready for a nice, long sleep.

A hand against his shoulder brought Peter back to reality. He turned to meet eyes with a nurse wearing a sad smile, perfected through years of experience.

“Mr. Spider-Man, if you have anything you’d like to do or say before we go through with things, now would be about that time.” Her voice was soft and sweet.

Peter couldn’t help but smile a bit at “Mr. Spider-Man,” but he nodded solemnly in response. He turned back to Eddie, who was stock-still and quiet as ever. It got to Peter every time, as if he expected it to change.

He glanced down to Eddie’s hand and took it in both of his very carefully, almost as if he was trying to keep it a secret. He rested his elbows on the bed.

“Hey, man,” Peter began, hoping against hope that there was some way Eddie’s brain could still understand him. “I don’t know how happy you are about me being the only person here for this. Don’t know how happy I am either. But I do know that… I’m sorry. Because I know I could’ve done all this sooner. I could’ve gotten you free, I could’ve dealt with the symbiote. But I didn’t. It was always some reason or another. ‘Oh, they’re not causing that much trouble,’ ‘Killing Eddie’s boyfriend isn't gonna make him like me much more.’” He paused. “And that—that’s bullshit. I should’ve done it for the sake of keeping you safe. That was reason enough. But it's too late now.”

He pulled one hand away from Eddie’s and reached under his mask to wipe his eyes. “I don’t know where we go after we die. But I hope wherever you end up, you finally get to be happy.”

He sat still for a moment, his eyes laser-focused on Eddie’s hand. In a split second he nodded, shut his eyes, and jerked Eddie’s hand into his face. Hard enough to knock himself back in his seat. The nurse yelped.

“Spider-Man, are you okay? Is he—”

“No, no,” Peter said, placing Eddie’s hand back on the bed as he rubbed his definitely-bleeding nose. He couldn’t help but chuckle a little. “I just had to let him get off the last shot. It’s what he would’ve wanted.”

The nurse nodded, distinctly not laughing. Peter understood. After a minute or so, he took a deep breath in, gathered his thoughts, and looked back to the nurse.

“Alright,” Peter said. “I'm ready. We’re ready.”

She only nodded as she turned to the respirator. Peter heard three soft beeps as she punched a few buttons, and the hiss of the ventilator stopped. And nothing took its place.

He was ready to go. He was free. He wasn’t in pain. And Peter could take comfort in that.

Even if he couldn’t say he did the right thing.

 

* * *

 

Johnny was over a few months later. Mary was out on business, Peter was lonely—that was how most of their interactions outside work began. They’d been sitting and chatting and venting with the TV playing nothing in particular.

“You ever gonna do anything with him?”

Peter gave Johnny a confused look. “With who?”

“Eddie,” Johnny said, pointing to the small urn that sat on the mantle, opposite side from Aunt May.

Peter thought for moment, then shrugged. “I think he’s fine where he is.”

Johnny looked more than a little incredulous. “You’re cool with having one of your many archnemeses sittin’ right up there with the woman who raised you?” He paused. “Not my business. I know. I guess I’m just surprised.”

Peter nodded. “I don’t blame you. I’m kinda surprised too. Eddie caused me a lot of trouble, but…” he stopped as he felt his breath catch in his throat. “He didn’t deserve to end up like he did. All he was ever looking for was a place where he was appreciated, where he belonged, and he thought he found that place. And then it killed him.”

Johnny didn’t respond, but his look toward the urn softened. Peter continued.

“This is the least I can do for him. Give him a real place to call home. Even if he isn’t here to enjoy it.”

Johnny shook his head, not in disagreement, but more in disbelief. “All I’ve gotta say is you are a better man than me, Parker.”

Peter smiled, lips tight, and shrugged.

“If you say so.”


End file.
